Such a multi-stage gearbox is preferably used as a torque splitting transmission in drive machines whereby the available gears of the torque splitting transmission are defined by selective activation of shift elements and hereby with an effective flow of force within planetary gearsets. A “torque splitting transmission” is hereby commonly meant to be a transmission unit through which several transmission ratios can be achieved with few step increments. In an overall transmission of an agricultural drive machine, such as a tractor, such a torque splitting transmission, as a load shift transmission, is commonly combined with another multi-gear transmission in form of a group transmission with large step increments, so that through this combination an overall transmission with a large number of presentable drive steps can be achieved, simultaneously with a large spread. Often, the additional transmission segments are hereby added in the form of a crawl and/or a reverse segment.
The multi-stage gearbox in a planetary construction is known through the EP 0495942 B1, which is a combination of a torque splitting transmission of an agriculture drive machine and a group transmission. Hereby, this torque splitting transmission has a housing in which four planetary gearsets and several shafts are positioned, of which one corresponds to the driveshaft and the other one, to the output shaft of the multi-stage gearbox. In addition, several shift elements are provided in the area of the shafts through which, by means of selective activation, the flow of power can be varied within the four planetary gearsets, and therefore different transmission ratios can be defined between the drive shaft and the output shaft. In total, eight transmission ratios of the multi-stage gearbox can be implemented.